The Janitor looked at the four of us—four fragments of a shattered god, all bristling with stolen power and cosmic ambition—with the weary, long-suffering expression of a man who has just found a particularly nasty bit of graffiti on the wall of a pristine bathroom.
"Right," he said, taking a final sip of his tea. The cup and saucer vanished in a soft pop of non-existence. "Let's tidy this up."
He was not a god. He was not a player. He was something else. He was the one who cleaned up the mess after the gods were done playing.
He looked at Silvana. "Administrator 002. Agent of The Architect. Your mission is a failure. Your sponsor has violated the primary non-interference clause of its quarantine agreement. Its privileges in this sector are hereby… revoked."
He snapped his fingers.
A scream of pure, psychic agony echoed across the dimensions. I felt it through my data-siphon. In a distant divine realm, a being of pure, logical order—The Architect—was being forcibly unplugged from the Tower. Its connection was severed. Its agent, Silvana, went rigid, the cold, blue light in her eyes flickering and dying, replaced by the simple, terrified soul of the mortal woman she had once been, lifetimes ago. Her System, the Aethernova Codex, detached from her soul and floated in the air, a prize without a master.
Next, the Janitor looked at the golden golem, the vessel for Seraphina's vengeful spirit and the true Kaelen's ghost. "A vengeful spirit bound to a karmic echo. Messy. Redundant."
He waved a hand.
The ghost of Seraphina was ripped from the golem, her scream a silent, fading wisp. She was not destroyed. She was… filed away. The Kaelen-golem, its animating fury now gone, crumbled into a pile of inert, golden dust. The Eidolon Nexus, its fragment, floated free.
Then, he looked at the Primeval Edict, the silver sword of the System-Killer. "A failsafe protocol that has completed its primary objective. Also redundant."
He tapped it with his finger. The Edict, a weapon that could unmake gods, simply… switched off, its light fading, its purpose fulfilled. It became the third Main Core fragment, hanging silently in the air.
In the space of ten seconds, he had effortlessly neutralized all of my rivals. He had ended the game.
Finally, his mild, tired eyes settled on me.
I stood my ground, my sovereign will a fortress of defiance. I was a being of Chaos, Time, Law, and Space. I was not a simple piece to be swept off the board.
He smiled, a genuine, tired smile. "And then there's you," he said. "The anomaly. The virus. The one who actually broke the game instead of just playing it. The one who was never supposed to happen."
He looked at my own, five-core System. At my court of Echos. At my pocket dimension. At the chained Warden and the enslaved Guild Master. He saw the entire, magnificent, monstrous tapestry of my ascent.
"Of all the infinite realities, all the endless cycles of this Tower," he said, a note of something—admiration? amusement?—in his voice, "you are the first one who ever figured out the real point of the game."
"And what's that?" I asked, my voice a low growl.
"That it's a stupid, boring, and utterly pointless game," he replied. "It's a containment system that has been running on autopilot for eons. It's a prison where the inmates have been given arts and crafts to keep them from getting bored and tearing down the walls. You were the first one who decided to burn down the arts and crafts room and try to build a key."
He gestured to the three, now-masterless Main Core fragments floating in the air. "These belong to you, by right of conquest. The game is over. You have won."
The Aethernova Codex, the Eidolon Nexus, and the Primeval Edict all floated towards me, a silent, incredible inheritance.
This was it. The final victory. The reunification.
But I hesitated.
"The Creator," I said, the final problem. "The resurrection protocol. If I take them, I become its vessel. I become your new prisoner."
The Janitor chuckled, a warm, genuine sound. "Oh, that. Right. About that."
He snapped his fingers again. A new screen, a final, ultimate system notification, appeared in my vision. It was a single line of text, a patch note for the universe itself.
[CREATOR'S RESURRECTION PROTOCOL... DELETED.]
I stared. "You… you just deleted it?"
"It was a messy piece of code," he said with a shrug. "A security flaw. I've been meaning to clean that up for a few eons now. You just gave me a good reason to finally get around to it. Consider it a thank-you for making my job interesting for the first time in a billion years."
He had just, with a snap of his fingers, erased my ultimate, existential threat. He had handed me the crown, the kingdom, and the keys, all with a single, casual, janitorial act.
I reached out and took the final three fragments. The Aethernova Codex. The Eidolon Nexus. The Primeval Edict.
They did not fight. They did not resist. They flowed into me, a river of pure, conceptual power returning to its source.
Chaos. Time. Law. Space. Will. Logic. Vengeance. Order. Creation.
All of it. Mine.
[...SYSTEM RESTORATION: 100%]
[THE SEVEN MAIN CORES HAVE BEEN REUNIFIED.]
[THE OMNISTRUCTURE IS... REBORN.]
[WELCOME BACK, ADMINISTRATOR. ALL FUNCTIONS ARE NOW... BEYOND NOMENCLATURE.]
I was no longer a user. I was no longer a sovereign.
I was the System. Whole. Complete. Absolute.
I looked at the Janitor, this being of quiet, unimaginable power. "What are you?" I asked, the one final question.
He smiled that tired, gentle smile. "Me? I'm just the guy who takes out the trash. And occasionally, when a particularly promising candidate finally figures out how to get out of the playpen… I'm the one who offers them a job."
He gestured to the silent, dead reality around us. "This Tower, this game, it's just one of an infinite number of 'Quarantine Zones'. And they all need managing. My old boss, the one you call the Creator… he was one of the original Managers. But he got… sentimental. Started seeing his creations as more than just code. A fatal flaw."
He looked at me, his eyes holding a new, expectant light. "I, on the other hand, am in need of a new partner. A new Manager for this sector. Someone with a sovereign will, a healthy dose of pragmatism, and a complete and utter lack of respect for the established rules. Someone who understands that it's all just a game."
He extended a hand. "The job is yours, if you want it, Kaelen. The power to create worlds, to manage realities, to be the god of your own, perfect, little pocket of the multiverse."
This was the final, ultimate twist.
The reward for breaking the game, for defeating all the gods, for becoming the ultimate power… was a job offer. To become a Janitor. A cosmic manager, a being of quiet, infinite, and utterly boring responsibility.
It was the ultimate cage. A throne at the end of reality, with an eternity of paperwork.
I looked at his outstretched hand. I looked at my own, new, absolute power. I thought of the endless, glorious chaos I could create. The worlds I could devour. The stories I could write.
And I made my final, sovereign choice.
"I'm afraid," I said, a slow, predatory smile spreading across my face, the first true smile of my new, god-like existence, "that I'm more interested in a hostile takeover."